Venus & Mars: Crests, Signs, and Sigils
by AuronLu
Summary: Goddess of love, god of war... Here is a selection of drabbles and short pieces exploring a bittersweet, fleeting liaison between the formidable sorceress and swordsman. Spoilers abound.
1. First Meeting

"Who's Yuna?"

Auron glanced up warily from the whetstone. The questioner proved to be a sullen-looking teen watching him with arms folded.

"Lord Braska's daughter," he grunted.

The girl sniffed. "Lord Braska is a bad Summoner."

"Excuse me?" Auron gave the waif a dour look.

The girl lifted a shoulder and let it fall. "Leaving her behind."

Auron shrugged. "If he brings the Calm, she'll be safe. So will many other little girls."

"Lucky them," Lulu said bluntly, turning away. "I'll look out for Yuna." Expression hooded, the youngster stalked off.

_Childhood,_ Auron thought sourly. _There's another who skipped it._

* * *

A/N: These are drabbles (100 words exactly) or short pieces written at different times for various writing prompts and challenges, all exploring what might have happened if Auron had allowed himself, at least for a little while, to be added to Lulu's "list". I've arranged the first 30 roughly in order of the game's storyline; after that, I will be adding new ones as they come to me. 


	2. Mi'hen

Cold eyelids closed beneath her fingers. Lulu swept her arms together in a mute prayer, bowed, and moved on. Her hands were chilled.

"What are you doing?"

The sorceress gazed at another young face. "Shutting their eyes. Yuna will be by soon to dance for them."

"Stop." Auron's warm hand slipped under hers, palm to palm. "Leave that to Yuna. We spend too much time with the dead."

Lulu looked up, startled by the contact. "The best revenge is life?" Why did it feel as if her heart had begun to beat only now?

He turned away. "Something like that."


	3. Faythless

Tidus kept pacing until Kimahri's hand suddenly shot out, seized the youngster by the shoulder, and planted him unceremoniously on the tile floor. Tidus glared. Wakka gave the young Guardian a sympathetic pound on the back. "Hang in there, buddy. She'll be out soon."

"Soon?" Tidus groaned. "Sometimes soon is days."

Kimahri rumbled under his breath, and the boy fell silent.

Lulu stood apart from the rest of them as usual. Her lips moved silently. She gave a slight bow, stretched, and waited.

"Praying?" Auron queried behind her.

"Mmm." She nodded. "Don't you?"

He stared at her expressionlessly.

"I suppose not," the mage said thoughtfully. "And yet you were a monk."

"Fallen."

Her eyebrows scrabbled upwards in surprise at the blunt, simple statement. She knew the bare bones of the incident with the high priest's daughter; Lulu made it her business to know as much as she could about anything that might impact Yuna's pilgrimage, her companions included. The weight behind the word implied--

Whatever he was hinting at, the arrival of Dona, a Summoner who proved that one could be fallen before one failed, put any further speculation out of her mind. Only as they were leaving the temple did she shoot him another keen glance. She had heard what he said as they passed by the Summoners' statues. "So you are a champion of Yevon now, Braska?"

Why did defeating Sin seem to kill faith? Maybe it was a mercy that Guardians and Summoners normally did not survive.


	4. Thief

So Auron did sleep, after all.

Since Guadosalam, Lulu had been chewing on an unsettling possibility. The clues were confusing: He breathed. He bled. He showed pain. How much was sham?

She had risen before dawn (such dawn as there was on the Thunder Plains), restless and brooding over her Summoner. Yuna would tell them, or not, at the right time. But she was rash. Lulu loved her like the moon, but knew the quest had suddenly become far more dangerous, and she must watch Yuna ten times more carefully now. Ginnem had said everything would be fine, too.

Then again, Ginnem had lacked Sir Auron for a Guardian.

He was sprawled out in a chair in the lobby, snoring faintly, his unsheathed sword propped against his leg. His scowl had eased in sleep. He still looked disgruntled. But she could see more clearly that he was not so old as his weathered scars and white hair made him seem.

That did not help at all.

Gripping her skirts to muffle the jingling, she glided closer.

Yes, he was breathing.

The scent of the Farplane, Maester Seymour had said. She inhaled behind his neck and noticed only that a man who had not showered ought to smell of more than the leather and cloth he wore. Another clue.

Lulu held her breath, circling around to study his features at close quarters. His glasses had slipped down his nose. Yes, he still had something of an eye beneath that twisted lid. She wondered how it had happened; that last sphere they watched of Braska's journey showed he had been in possession of both eyes this far along on the pilgrimage.

The stubble on his cheeks never really grew more or less... did he shave, or was that another hint that his time was up?

So close. Her lips hovered over Auron's temple as she sought answers and felt the twist in her stomach that hinted at far more basic wants.

The mage straightened, turned, and glided away, head bowed. Not yet. Yevon only knew how he might respond, and Yuna did not need her senior Guardians edgy in each other's presence right now. One stolen kiss was not worth the trouble it might cause.

Auron raised his head and followed the mage's retreating back towards the hallway. A smirk crossed his face. "Wonderful," he muttered, settled back again, and closed his eye.


	5. Via Purifico

_Lost your Summoner, Lost your Summoner._

"Shut up." Lulu recalled with disdain Barthello's tearful panic when the musclebound Guardian accosted them in the damp forest of Macalania searching for his lost Dona. On the other hand, she gathered that the bond between the poor brute and his capricious mistress was no mere friendship.

_Yuna, my dear sister, you will be strong and whole when I find you, or Yevon will pay._

The Via Purifico, contrary to its name, was a stinking, fetid, humid maze of tunnels full of the effects of past unlucky victims and the slime of those reduced to fiends. How very efficient. Everyone who died down here, lost and afraid, would become fiends to prey on future vistors.

She heard a crunch of bone and swung around, cupping her hands together and pulling power from the darkness into her hands. The flicker of flame seeping out between her reddened fingers revealed a red-clad shape, glasses glinting. She shook out the spell and glided to his side.

"Yuna?" she asked curtly.

"Lost," Auron grunted. "Let's start looking."

Lulu laughed softly. "That girl is never lost. We just can't keep up with her sometimes."

They strode off into the darkness side by side, the mage with deadly determination, the warrior with strong, sure strides as if he owned this haven for the damned. Both had lost Summoners. This time, they would not lose.


	6. Touchstone

"No. Yuna, see to Tidus. I'll take care of Sir Auron."

The Summoner nodded, biting her lip, and moved off to kneel beside the boy struggling weakly to rise. In a better world, one would not have to face daily the sight of loved ones brought to death's edge or beyond by living nightmares.

Uncapping the vial of phoenix down, Lulu gazed at the rugged warrior's grey face. He was still frowning, even now. Shaking the soft golden fibers into her hand, she started to exhale over them, then paused.

Ever since Guadosalam, she had been wondering about him. No, even before that.

The mage gathered Sir Auron's bloody forearm in her opposite hand, searching his wrist with her fingers. His body was beginning to cool off; she shouldn't waste time with this. But she couldn't help being curious.

When she was fairly certain she had the right spot, she blew across her cupped palm, and the soft feathery threads ignited at once at the kiss of her warm, living breath. She shook them across his face and waited. Auron groaned, opened his eye, and gave her a jaundiced look (which, really, was amusing; Wakka and Tidus always had a rather distinct reaction when they found her bending over them). "Yes?" he asked irritably.

_No pulse. Yevon, there was no pulse, and yet he was looking her straight in the eye._ Lulu fumbled for words, barely daring to breathe. "That chimaera took a bite out of you. Hold still until Yuna's finished working on Tidus."

Nonplussed, he glanced down at her hand, still cupping his wrist. Was she simply touching the wrong spot?

_Thump._

Lulu gazed down at the swordsman with a mixture of awe and profound annoyance.

_Thump._

Almost absentmindedly, his heart began to beat again, and she saw his chest start to rise and fall. Suddenly anger flared in her eyes at the sheer gall of the man, letting himself be killed when he was already dead. So that was the answer to all Seymour's riddling words!

Auron stared at her quizzically, even more puzzled when she pressed a curt kiss against his temple so quickly that he would have thought he'd imagined it, save that it was hard to miss anything that those fierce lips let fall. Then she swept up her skirts, swept to her feet, and stalked off.


	7. First Kiss

It had not been their first kiss. The first had been hers alone, standing tiptoe and rolling his collar down with a fingertip, seeing herself reflected in his glasses that fended off the world, feeling a giddy stab of triumph at his quizzical frown just before Lulu covered his lips with hers. Auron had stiffened like one of Macalania's frozen trees and proved himself dead beyond shadow of a doubt, but she did not mind. It was hard to catch a legendary hero offguard. No, that was not their first kiss. It was hers, the key that unlocked everything afterwards.


	8. Whispers

_Trust me_. Auron's sash is draped across my eyes. He knows how much I hate to cede control. When his gruff whisper brushes against my ear that way, however, I melt. It's enough to thaw the frost inside and make me feel alive again.

We're twenty feet up in the trees of Macalania, and one slip could tumble us off the branch. I'm not sure whether a broken hip or giving ourselves away to our companions would be more painful. The campfire's right below us, but Kimahri's the only one who ever thinks to look up. He smelled us out days ago, of course, but he keeps quiet. As long as we don't let it distract us while we're on duty, it's not his concern. With Auron and myself, that is not an issue.

_Trust me. _Auron's teeth make a nibbling pilgrimage of my ear, and I bite my lip hard to keep from adding to the forest's eerie cries. That hand he usually keeps tucked in his coat is silently unlocking the belts around my hips one by one. His other arm is wrapped tightly around my waist. His fingers brush spiderweb caresses against my inner thigh as he nudges the belts aside. A gruff whisper at my ear dares me darkly, sinking into my soul: _Let go, Lulu, stop thinking. I won't let you fall._


	9. Odin & Hel

"Stop that."

Lulu pulled back a few inches, and once more she and Auron became an imperfect mirror, his one good eye staring into the eye she kept unveiled. He reached out and brushed aside the curtain of dark hair that fell across the other half of her face, dividing her features into light and shadow. His lips brushed against the elegant spring of her right eyebrow.

"Only if you stop doing that," Lulu countered fondly.

"It's ugly," Auron growled. "You have nothing to hide."

"I think it's attractive." She leaned close and planted another soft kiss over the buckled, drooping lid of his ruined eye with utmost gentleness. "It keeps the Legendary Hero from being perfect."

He snorted. "It's still ugly."

"Not to me. It's the sign of who you are: what you would sacrifice to defend your Summoner."

"Not exactly. Braska was already dead."

"Stubborn as ever." She resettled his glasses carefully on the bridge of his nose, hiding the worst of the scar. "I still think you have beautiful eyes."


	10. Out of the Sun

The Calm Lands were never calm. However, now and then when the high grasses were rippling in great waves for miles like rolling breakers on Besaid's shores, and the sun beat down fiercely on their backs like Bikanel's inferno, and someone just had to rest after being all-but-killed in a battle against one of the nightmares that stalked the sleepy grasses in broad daylight, if Kimahri was on watch, then Lulu would steal away to "get out of the sun." Auron would always go to make sure she came back. There wasn't any shade, really, but he had broad shoulders.


	11. Benefits

Auron took a sparing swig, savoring the odd firewater he'd developed a taste for in Zanarkand. He would run out soon. He had avoided the stuff for several years on principle, some kind of atonement for having been so hard on Jecht, or maybe wariness that the same poison might take hold of him. Nowadays, though, it reminded him of her. Sometimes silky and mild, but it could bite unexpectedly with a slow deadly afterburn that shook your boots off.

Benefits. He'd come on Yuna's journey on a personal crusade: end the madness ten years late, free Jecht, avenge Braska, finish the pilgrimage he'd left half-finished. That was all. Saving Spira was almost secondary; Auron just hated leaving things undone.

He hadn't thought about the reality of a second pilgrimage, of spending time with another set of Guardians, save as a way for Jecht's boy to get a chance at life, real life, not some dream-world cooked up by the spirits of the dead sleeping a thousand years until they'd run through every original idea and were stuck on Blitzball. _Blitzball_. He sighed and returned to contemplating his drink, capping the jug and letting it drop with a faint clunk.

Yes, very much like her. Lulu was just one of the huddle of bodies asleep by the fire, tucked next to Yuna tonight with their hands laced together, symbol of that unspoken sisterly bond between them that he generally ignored, since it meant hair and hugs and gentle advice and (for all he knew) gossip about the rest of the party. He had a feeling that it was no accident the mage had arranged their bedrolls with her head at an angle towards him. She had slipped partway out of the blankets, white skin gleaming all the way down to the dip betwen her breasts, face peaceful and composed in sleep.

Or not. Right on cue, the mage stirred, peeled open the one eye that was visible beneath her sheaf of black hair across her face, and searched sleepily across the clearing, counting heads. Their gazes met for an instant, and the corners of her mouth twitched into a faint smile. She snuggled back down again, turning over. Moonlight shone on the smooth, elegant plane of one shoulderblade.

No, when Auron had spotted Yuna's party across the stadium and decided to bank his hopes on Braska's daughter, he hadn't really contemplated the benefits.


	12. Timeless

In Lulu's dreams, they were always walking.

No surprise: after three pilgrimages, she had learned the art of dozing on her feet.

Sometimes Yuna glided before them, sometimes Ginnem, and sometimes there was no Summoner at all. Sometimes they searched grimly through circuitous caverns for a staff, a scrap of fabric, some trace, even blood...

Yet sometimes Lulu dreamed that they were walking south, side by side. The southern cliffs of the Calm Lands rising up before their eyes were a view that Summoners and Guardians seldom faced (although she had seen it twice, once without a Summoner, once trailing dejectedly behind Father Zuke). The sunlight was so clear, so bright, so true it hurt her eyes.

Rikku and Tidus were frisking around Yuna who wore a spidery daisy chain courtesy of her cousin, all the crown of triumph the High Summoner needed with her sweet smile. Wakka seemed to have shed his clumsiness, and Lulu felt a stab of benevolence towards him, forgiveness for all the times he had been a fool. Kimahri paced far ahead as honor guard; Lulu had always assumed he would die inches from Yuna.

Sir Auron was walking beside Lulu at the back of the party where he had always been, sword sheathed, duties met, scars appeased: walking with an easy swing, not with that inexorable stride carrying him towards a deadly goal.

Not that Auron relaxed even now. Aloof as ever, he was simply _there_. Lulu knew vaguely there was some miracle at work she should not examine too closely, lest he slip away like dawn's first blush. She savored the wind ruffling his gray hair and wondered where and how to lodge a Legendary Hero at rest, whether she dared try to seduce him to disembark at a mysterious port called "home."


	13. Smooth

Her hands are whisper enfleshed, long white fingers that she keeps hidden in sleeves most of the time as if they were too delicate for the sun or even a gaze to glance across. Time given over to kissing them is well-spent, not only for the soft breathy sounds she makes, but for the way her fingerpads move against my lips, a deft light pulse that seems to be coaxing my dead heart to beat.

Those hands. Have you ever wondered what she does with them on those rare nights when we are snug in our rooms in an inn where one Ronso or Blitzballer in the hallway is adequate for a guard?

Have you ever seen her reach carelessly into the fading body of a fiend that's just fallen to someone's sword or her thunderbolt? In that last second before it's gone, she'll pluck out a bone or a tiny knot of crystal or a feather or a scale, working it loose gently with her nails, and hand it over to Rikku for her mad little experiments. It's a scavenger's caress, but Lulu makes that, too, look like poetry.

Have you ever noticed that pitiless, emphatic twist as she brings her cupped palms together in a mockery of Yevon's prayer? I expect the fiend's neck to snap spontaneously, without need for a lightning bolt to do the job.

I have sampled those nights and survived them, possibly because a second death is not an option. I wonder if Chappu ever received the treatment. That moment when sparks are tumbling off her nails like flying embers, and the lines of fleeting fire across my hips and scarred chest are flickering stealthily towards one goal, I just might get religion again if I don't kill her first. Unnerving danger turns to cool, clear water at the last moment.

"Still alive?" she asks, her fingers smooth and knowing as she begins to work that damned magic in places where magic absolutely should NOT be used. The frost constricts my throat, although it's nowhere near my face.

That's right. Soft. Like new snakeskin.

Smooth as a sword-blade arcing down for the spot where head and neck part ways.


	14. Morning Wakeup Call

A fist banged on the door. "Hey, Lu, are you up?"

The mage raised her head with a groan and wiped her hair away from her eyes. She was getting old. Well, Wakka had accused her of it, but the glorious ache in her hips and jaw confirmed it.

"Unh," she replied with less than her usual eloquence. "I'm getting there."

"Okay. Hey, do you remember which room is Auron's? Nobody's seen him yet this morning, an' that damned heathen running the front desk won't tell me. Sez she doesn't know." Lulu could almost hear the blitzball captain's eyes rolling in irritation.

Auron lay there unhelpfully, arms folded behind his head. Just how long had he been awake?

"Sorry, no," the mage answered, offering a silent prayer of thanks to the "heathen" proprietor who evidently knew something of propriety. The fact was, Auron had not bothered to rent a room.

"Hurry up, ya? Rikku's drivin' me nuts." Wakka stumped off down the corridor.

Lulu wasn't usually much for fuzzy chests, but Auron was so warm. She nuzzled against him, eyes flickering shut.

"You do remember that we're on pilgrimage?" Auron chided mildly.

"Mmm," she murmured. "Rikku's right. Let's just forget the whole thing. I know this island..."

"No."

"The beds are larger."

"They stick flowers in your drink."

Lulu raised her head, blinking. Auron's deadpan was as ironclad as ever. "One of Jecht's bright ideas?"

"Worse. Warrior monks, post-investiture celebration." Auron sounded pained.

"Lulu?" It was Rikku's voice this time, bearing the telltale quaver of stockpiled indignities scheduled to be placed at the mage's feet for inspection.

Lulu buried her face in his chest again. "Give me ten more minutes, Rikku!"

Auron shook her ungently. "Guardian. Up."

She gave in. There was a lot he could do in ten minutes.


	15. Guard Your Emotions

Guard your emotions, then guard your summoner.

That's harder for you than it used to be, isn't it? Yet I refuse to feel one shred of guilt as I turn in the snow leaving red cherry drops and bring my hand down raining sparks on the machina that caught Rikku and me both by surprise. You keep your eyes forward and veer away; there are fiends to worry about too.

The gold-tipped end of Yuna's staff flashes off to my left, and I shake my head. No need to waste Aeons on these creatures. The summit's close, Zanarkand's after; she must let us do our jobs for now.

It's harder for me, too, Auron, when I see four fists slam into you from that frost-breathed behemoth and hear a crunch that a breastplate can't muffle. Your sword comes up from somewhere, and I see a rain of yellow sparks connect just before you go down under its feet.

That's my cue. Fire leaps across the space between my outstretched fingers and the enemy. Its howls barely touch me, nor the satisfying thud when it crashes down. You groan and pick yourself up, dragging your sword as you limp back to Yuna.

Guard your emotions. Guard your Summoner.

Then guard your Guardian.


	16. Cold Wind from Zanarkand

The snow blew into the cave no matter how much they heaped up packs and blitzballs and odds and ends. Everyone wedged in together at the back, Rikku's knees poking Wakka's ribs (so he said loudly), Tidus a-grumble, Yuna too quiet and withdrawn behind one of those frozen smiles. It used to be Lulu holding her when Summoner training left her drained and mute, but the boy from the sea had elbowed his way into that spot. Lulu had stopped worrying about it after he learned the price: if he was going to live in Spira he must learn about loss, and if he died here it wouldn't matter. Instead she moved to keep watch at the entrance, sandwiched between Kimahri and Auron, red coat gathered closely around her shoulders, watching the snow swirl past.

"Lulu stay back," Kimahri rumbled at length. "Too cold. Kimahri and Auron guard."

"Soon." She stole a glance towards the swordsman, measuring the puffs of frosted breath before his face. How many did he have left? "Your mountain is beautiful, Kimahri."

Ten years in Besaid had trained her instincts to recognize the shift in the big Ronso's weight as the equivalent of a smile.

"Braska... also watched." Auron whispered, apparently noting her veiled scrutiny. "He found wonder in everything." There was a grey gleam from his glasses as the seasoned Guardian turned away from both of them.

Usually he only spoke of his past pilgrimage to and for Tidus and Yuna, to give them back a little of what they missed. But something had held him in Spira this long, despite his vehement denials of regret, of dwelling on the past.

_I tried to change the world. But I changed nothing._

Lulu could feel the poignant presence of one diamond, Braska's daughter, resting behind her. She knew suddenly from the surety with which Auron had led them to this scant shelter that it was not the first time he had stood here with one or two comrades, gazing out at the snow. The set of his shoulders was weary. He had come full circle. This moment, for him, was frozen in time.

Mutely, Lulu slipped the oversized coat off one shoulder and gritted her teeth against the blast of icy wind. She drifted against him and reached up to drape the coat around him too.

"Kimahri's right. It's cold."

Auron grunted, drew an arm around her and bundled both of them together under his coat. There was a faint crunch beside them.

"Kimahri check on Yuna," the other Guardian muttered, retreating.

They shared a numb kiss and then stood side by side, watchful and beyond words. There was only snow. Darkness. The clear blue scent of mountain air. Twin puffs of frosted breath blending together and whirled away by the icy winds from Zanarkand.


	17. Stay Awake

The snow was falling more thickly now. The children -- _kids_, Lulu had called them in their race on Ohalland's staircase, although Wakka at least was only a few years younger -- were huddled together at the back of the rock alcove. Yuna and Tidus were cuddled together across Kimari's lap, his shaggy arms laid around them; Rikku, improbably, was curled against Wakka, emnities forgotten. The Blitzball player from Besaid was snoring, but the howling of the wind over the outcrop above him nearly drowned out the familiar sound. Thick clumps of snow swirled like pyreflies.

The embers of the fire were low and red. Lulu knew she ought to do something, but there was little left to burn now, and she was dreamily tired. The red coat thrown around her shoulders was barely blocking the wind, and her face and cheeks were numb. The nagging buzz of her thoughts had grown too feeble for the rest of her to remember. Her head drooped forward.

There was a soft sound of footsteps, boots kicking through fresh-fallen snow. Auron flung down another arm-load: a weather-stained wooden shield, bits and pieces of broken wheels and an axle from a wagon, relics of one of the hundred "hard ways" Summoner parties had used trying to beat Mt. Gagazet. Yuna and Tidus stirred together like pups in a burrow as the older Guardian set about adding the kindling to the embers of the old fire. After sleepy glances towards Sir Auron, both of them nuzzled a little closer and drifted off again. Wakka's snoring never missed a beat, and Rikku was probably too deafened by it to notice anything else.

Auron paused in his quiet labors to shake the mage's shoulder. "I thought you were on watch," he said curtly.

"Mmm," Lulu said groggily. "Kimahri... "

"...can't keep the fire going in this storm." Bare to the shoulder, and apparently unaffected by the biting winds, the grizzled swordsman settled beside her and gave her braids a short, sharp tug. "Guardian."

Lulu flinched, frowned more at herself than at his presumption, and molded her irritation into a sullen red knot between her fingers. It was too weak. She mentally catalogued indignities: the volume of Wakka's snoring, Yuna's smile that should have melted Sin to soft rain if the world were less cruel, the deceitful puffs of frosted breath around Auron's stubbled chin that fooled everyone else in the party. Red turned to a claws-and-teeth sputtering sphere of orange that seemed more sparks than flame. She threw it across the cold wood and sat back with weary satisfaction as the fire blazed up again. It was a risky beacon, but a vital weapon against Gagazet's deadliest fiend, the cold.

The others were well and truly asleep; even that professional display had not roused them. Auron gathered her against him, heat radiating from his bare arms like pyreflies from the Moonflow. "Stay awake," he said gruffly at her ear, lips brushing against her blue skin.

She shivered. "Stop that," she muttered. "Someone might see."

"Then," Auron said conversationally, "_someone_ had better stay awake, lest I resort to emergency measures." His ungloved hand slipped under the heavy coat.

"You are the troublemaker, after all," she sighed appreciatively.

The Ronso's yellow eyes gleamed on the far side of the fire, but he kept his own counsel.


	18. Zanarkand Vigil

Tidus and Yuna were asleep in each other's arms, her ribbons wrapped around his arms like a gentle leash. Overhead, pyreflies danced a Final lullabye for the Summoner. Rikku dozed in a heap, worn out with wishing. Wakka snored beside her. Kimahri waited, eyes fixed fiercely towards distant spires.

Auron did not tell Lulu to rest. They guarded the fire and their Summoner. His hands traced the lines of her shoulders, face and neck for hours until his arms came to nestle around her waist.

Life. Death. Lulu sensed both in him, numbly certain that tomorrow, one would finally win.


	19. Fight Your Sorrow

_Now is the time to choose. Die and be free of pain, or live to fight your sorrow!_

Auron's voice rings out like a trumpet to battle, summoning us to the one battle he truly wants us to win. He calls us to blasphemy, and even Wakka won't hesitate now. Destroy Yunalesca!

Did they see it? In all Tidus' barking about _his_ story (it's Yuna's story; we're just along for the ride, foolish boy), did he understand what just played out before our eyes?

Sir Auron's last futile charge: his body lifts up and away and falls broken against the floor where we now stand. His swords spins and plummets, and my heart is screaming as it did when I heard of Chappu's body broken on the Djose sands.

That snake may change herself into a hundred forms, but we'll break them, every one. She betrayed her city. She betrayed Spira. She betrayed Braska. But Auron will be her last victim. Fury sings in my veins as I elbow Wakka out of my path. His eyes widen at the ice in my cold face, and he lunges aside as I raise both fists gathering fire between my palms. I barely feel the waves of nausea as the bitch-snake squirms and strikes back at us, writhing under triple assault of Tidus' darting strokes, Auron's hammer blows, and the bitter rage of one she robbed.

The air screeches with flares, lightning, and the madness of the storm. I could have loved him. You destroyed him. I'll fight Sin tomorrow, but you, Yunalesca, you are going to scream for me now.


	20. Vengeance

Lightning kept drilling into the same spot like a storm in the mountains, hammering again and again at an iron-ore peak until it wasn't just individual bolts screaming from heaven, it was a whole tree of forked lighning taking root.

Lulu felt her strength leeching away from her limbs; she wasn't doing it right. The rule was always to anchor first to Spira's pulse, don't use your own energy, let the ebb and flow of the planet's current rush through your fingers and out. But this fight was personal, it was from her heart's fire, and she had enough bottled fury to outlast the bitch no matter how many times Yunalesca changed from one hideous shape to the next--

"Lulu." It was his voice, calling her out of the haze of wrath's madness. "It's finished. Yunalesca... is dead."

Auron risked folding a gloved hand over her outstretched fingers, bringing her arm down gently to her side. She wanted to lean back against him, but the others were there, and maybe they would realize why and how much she cared, and how wrong it was.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He shrugged. "Don't be. That was worth waiting ten years to see."


	21. Sweet Tooth

The skin of the airship purred beneath them. Auron gazed stonily towards the clouds ahead, lost in thought, probably pondering Jecht's next move. His loose sleeve flapped in the wind, and the beads of Lulu's braids clinked lightly against the deck behind them.

"Back to the gorge, then?" Lulu sighed.

Silence. She liked his silences, but sometimes... well.

The mage dipped her spoon in the cup she was holding, scooped up a mud-colored dollop of something that sparkled in the late afternoon sun, twisted towards him and dabbed a blob of it on the older Guardian's nose. _That_ got his attention in a hurry. He wiped it off and flung it away.

"No!" she said, laughing and leaning sideways to lick his nose clean, causing him to wrinkle his face in a comical scowl. "It's too good to waste, Auron."

"Yes, the gorge. I want another look at that sword." He grimaced at her. "What _is_ that stuff?"

She scooped up another spoonful and held it tantalizingly before his nose -- a little lower, this time, so he could smell it. "More Al Bhed heresy, according to Wakka. You'd probably like it. I'm sure it's against Yevon's teachings. Rin asked me if I thought it would sell."

As if testing for poison, Auron stooped and licked the spoon cautiously. He gave her a puzzled but not displeased glance. "It's sweet."

"And dark." She helped herself to the bottom of the iced chocolate, licking her lips.

"But too cold." He unceremoniously seized the remainder and began painting the hollows of her throat and collarbones. Lulu clamped her teeth together to keep from letting out a less than dignified yelp. The swordsman gave her a toothy smile. "This should help." He wrapped his gloved hand in her braids and held her steady, but by the time he finished they had long forgotten Rin's question.


	22. Breath of Life

Auron sleeps so seldom. At first I did not think he slept at all. It was one of those tiny clues that began to pique my suspicions.

We have so little time on this journey, and should be giving it to Yuna. Our time is not our own. Guard our Summoner. Or rest, so that we will be strong for what tomorrow holds. Wakka curses the Al Bhed and their inns, their ships. I cannot thank them enough, even if the bunks are narrow. Four walls, a locked door, and we need not worry about guarding Yuna for this one precious night.

The bed is cramped and I wake near dawn. A pale blue light spills in through the glass portal, painting my skin silver. The ship hums beneath us. I hold my breath, trying not to stir as I awaken, although my shoulder is stiff from six hours in one position. Auron is such a light sleeper.

His chest rises and falls against mine, and the heavy arm cast carelessly over my shoulders is relaxed. By day I will watch him rip the life from the fiends we face with its strength. For now he is a maelstrom at rest, and his breath floats against my skin.

Breathing.

Still breathing, ten years dead. I can destroy a basilisk, take down a Marlboro in a few frenzied strikes if the fury is on me, char to ash any ordinary fiend we face. Death, all my skill is with death.

No Summoner healed him. No Fayth took pity on him. Whatever power holds him in my arms is all his own, to spite a world that betrayed him. That soft even breath against my cheek is a greater magic than anything I can weave. He breathes out. I breathe in.


	23. Hindsight & Foresight

_Crack._

Lulu stooped, picked up the bent frames, and inspected them for damage. She straightened them between her fingers while Auron leaned against the bulkhead raggedly, staring at nothing. He drew his hand back into his coat. His breathing slowed and steadied. His face set like potter's clay.

She kissed his dead eye apologetically and slid the glasses back into place to hide it. "I'm sorry. I phrased that badly. No, I suppose Lord Braska _didn't_ know what he was doing. But none of us does, Auron. Even you cannot know, legendary hero or no. That is not your fault."


	24. Pyreflies

Blue, green, shimmering gold flashes often roused Lulu from sleep and set her heart pounding. She could never be sure whether they were remnants of nightmare or real, those baleful death-gleams dancing above the bunk like wisps of wind made visible. The reassuring darkness of her cabin put such fears to shame. The mage gripped the pillow more tightly to avoid digging into Auron's shoulder, and closed her eyes resolutely.

Pyreflies. Once she had found them beautiful, a stubborn reminder of life that Sin could change but not vanquish. Now they were sands slipping through the hourglass of her heart.


	25. Idle Choices

"Which Aeon would be yours?" Lulu tapped a finger against Auron's temple.

"Excuse me?"

"The Aeons," she repeated thoughtfully. "Were you a Summoner, upon whom would you be most likely to call?"

He almost did not answer her: idle questions were just that."Valefor." he said finally.

Lulu made a surprised sound in her chest. "Really? She's awfully sweet-tempered for you, I should think."

"Personality is irrelevant. She covers the sky, leaving me to cover the ground." He shrugged dismissively. "So, which of them would you invoke?"

"Shiva." The sorceress smiled dangerously.

Auron snorted, pressing a kiss against her forehead. "Rendundant."


	26. Expertise

"Yevon!" Auron swore vehemently. A splinter of coherence returned to his face then, and he grimaced at himself in chagrin, grinding his teeth as he lost that round of the game.

"I heard that," she murmured, eyes twinkling. "I thought you didn't believe in Yevon any longer?"

"Has... anyone... ever... told you... that what you are doing... is probably blasphemy?" he grunted, shuddering between every word.

Carefully, sweetly, she twisted her hands in that certain fashion, feeling the frost prickle in the thin gap between her palms and his heated flesh before quickly melting away into a layer of warm water. "I was just trying to make you feel at home, Auron," she purred fondly. "There was no need for you to find religion again for my sake."

He groaned and gripped the furs under him, struggling to hold himself still. "You're a witch."

Her lips twisted into an arrogant smile. Lulu always had taken a certain pride in her skills, whether professional or purely private, but with Sir Auron as incentive, she had definitely surpassed herself in creativity. It was only fitting homage to a legendary hero, after all. She gave a sly lick. "You've come to the best."


	27. Self Deception

"Hmph." Auron's hand played idly across Lulu's hip as he watched her eyelids droop.

She snuggled closer. "Mmm?"

Silence.

Lulu tugged his ponytail gently. "What 'hmph'?"

"You once said," Auron murmured, sliding his calloused palm up her stomach and making her shiver, "that there was nothing between us."

Despite the unspoken question, she could not resist a faint chuckle. She folded her hand over his. "Well, you know, there _isn't_." The toe of one foot traced his calf to demonstrate.

"That's not exactly what you meant."

"Because I thought..." She sighed out. "Anyway. This is all we have time for."


	28. Speechless

You pretend to frown the way Yuna pretends to smile. For most of her life and and more than all of yours, those expressions didn't need to be faked. You're all armor. Your monastery training did not include mandatory mirth.

This time, you are frowning for others to see. Your glance my way is more than farewell. The lights rising from your shoulders recall the burning ecstasy I have seen loosen your mask in rare moments of release. My cool nod must serve as reply. I do not fall to my knees when pyreflies make a sincere bolt for freedom.


	29. Knightfall

Lulu's hand twined with Yuna's. A starry sky over Besaid's beach was a precious commodity, usually hidden by the sea fog that came rolling in each night. Tonight was clear. Tonight ex-Guardian and ex-Summoner stole out for a bit of peace. Yuna needed it more; Lulu could define solitude by a glare or glance. Now they lay side by side on the sand.

"There," the mage said quietly. "Did you see?"

"Star-fall," Yuna whispered back. "Yes, I saw. That's the third. What does it mean, Lulu?"

The mage laughed. "Nothing, I imagine. It happened once in the Calm Lands. The whole sky was dripping stars. Auron would not let me rouse you." It was a white lie, of course. Lulu remembered how she had wept to see them for reasons she could not explain. Auron had guarded her pride while they guarded their Summoner, keeping vigil beside her and raining rough kisses on her exposed skin until a trivial matter like the sky falling was quite forgotten.

"They look like pyreflies," Yuna observed wistfully, as another streaked down with a long streamer of color that faded slowly.

The older woman sighed. "I know."

In her mind's eye, Yuna was back on the deck of Cid's ship, watching her Aeons come apart one by one. Lulu was farther away in dream-Zanarkand. She stood at the edge of a Blitzball stadium lit by a thousand lights. A precious swirl of pyreflies was drifting upwards, merging with the darkened sky--

"Lulu!" Yuna reached over and touched her cheek. "You're crying? What's wrong?"

Amethyst lips twisted into an enigmatic smile. "Just remembering. When you Send, the pyreflies spiral up into the sky. I can't help wishing, sometimes, that we could call them back. But he would not come, would he? This is our world now."

"Chappu?" Yuna asked gently.

Lulu remained silent. A red ember fell from the spine of heaven, and she watched it all the way down. _It is our world, but oh, brave star, I wish it could still be yours._


	30. Farplane

At first, Lulu feared her longing might conjure up his rugged body, a landscape her fingers remembered so well. No, the Farplane seemed to observe rules of decorum. Her breath caught at the blaze of red and softened at the sight of his scruffy grey hair.

Unlike other visitors, she was not fooled. No one was looking back at her. The fire of a burning soul had moved on.

Lulu wiped her damp cheek with a knuckle and smiled. "I'm glad one of us is free."


	31. Lucky in Love

She had been lucky, Lulu reflected. Who had not envied the grumpy girl with the Auroch's star (an oxymoron) draped on her arm or tugging her hand, saying, "this way, Lu!"

She had been more than lucky to share those final weeks of Yuna's pilgrimage with the miracle of Auron's existence. He had been ten times more _there_ than any man alive. The last peals of thunder against her skin and soul were still dying away.

"I must be the luckiest guy in the world," Wakka whispered hazily against her shoulder.

One couldn't push one's luck too often, after all.


	32. Envy

If only.

Tidus was there, coming up out of the sea again like an Aeon (but the Fayth were gone, so how in Spira could anything have dreamed him back into being?) and waving with that goofy kid grin on his face. The mage _had_ missed him, missed his clueless questions and his energy and his innocence and his loving Yuna so badly that it hurt to watch, knowing where the Summoner was going taking his heart along with her. But it hadn't ended up that way at all. Yuna and Lulu had both lost something precious when Spira got saved. Only the others didn't know it; they just knew what Tidus' going away meant.

She could taste the tears again that she had saved for her cabin that day. Her newborn son lay in her arms, three days old. Yuna was back from all her lonely wanderings with her face lit up with so much joy that the Fayth would be singing across Spira if they weren't lost. Everyone on the beach was whooping, storming around; Wakka was pounding Tidus on the back.

Happily ever afters. Vidina stirred and nuzzled against her, and she bent to kiss that soft cheek fiercely. "You'll never know loss." It was a lie, of course; nobody could change the world that way, and she would never admit false hopes into Vidina's future.

Wakka would be a good father.

She watched Tidus and Yuna together again in the shallows, holding onto dreams that didn't die and didn't fade away before your eyes.

She'd settled for life. She'd settled for what was possible. Yuna hadn't.

Vidina's hair was red, not black, and those pudgy features belonged to Besaid, not some other plane.

Lulu had everything. It was just the sea spray, salt in her eye.


	33. Too Much Nog

The Ronso ale was flowing freely, and it was the first time the six of them had been together in six years. It was always so precious to hear Yuna laughing, really laughing, without having to pretend or seize the moment like a gemcutter trying to chip a diamond out of a rough matrix.

"What do you say--" Lulu said, rocking back and stretching outrageously, making Tidus goggle a little, for all that he was wrapped around Yuna-- "to a dip in the hot springs upstairs? I could go for a swim."

"Hot springs? Yuna laughed. "Goodness, Lu, I don't think you could walk back to the guest-house, let alone all the way up the mountain. How did you know about those, anyway?"

"Oh, it's not _that_ far. You know," Lulu giggled, feeling vaguely relieved that Wakka had already taken Vidina back to their room, "just up there--" she pointed vaguely to the bluff above them... "there's a little pool, only it's not that little, and Aur--"

A large hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she looked up into deep-set eyes and a wise face crowned by a shaggy white mane. The Ronso rumbled. "Kimahri take Lulu up there, once. _Drunk mage_ tonight, can't climb steps." He stared at her hard while Rikku tittered over her tankard.

"Oh yeah," Tidus said. "Kimahri chased me off, said Lulu was doing her hair or something."

"Drunk mage!" the Al Bhed crowed, proving she, too, had probably downed one too many. "It's a new dressphere!"

Irked, Lulu floundered her way out of the fog, grasping for a suitable retort, and suddenly realized her near-slip. She propped her the back of her head against Kimahri's shaggy chest for a moment. "Thanks," she whispered under her breath. He gave her shoulder a teeth-jarring thump that was probably meant to be a gentle pat and stepped away, crossing his arms.

"Oh, Lulu," Yuna said with a faint hint of reproach. "Why didn't you let us in on that little secret?"

Lulu laughed and waved a hand at her. "Because Tidus would've spied on us."

"H-hey!"

Kimahri gave a soft whuff of amusement at her elbow. Lulu ducked slightly and winked up at him, hiding nostalgia behind the heavy tankard as she drained her drink. _And gotten quite an eyeful, she reflected wistfully_. She pondered taking Wakka up there later, then shook her head.

Some memories should be left undisturbed.


	34. Untrodden Paths

_Author's note: Rather than scramble new amidst the old, I'll post updates here at the end and rearrange them after a few months._

When Lulu painted fine lines of flame or frost across Auron's weathered hide, or when he teased her to sighing torment with his tongue burnishing the white shell of her skin, that was a magical journey. Yet they only skimmed each others' surfaces. They reached deeper when they locked gazes like Ronso in a silent battle of wills, eye to single eye with the fire of their souls unshuttered; deeper still when they met in that place of madness and bliss that had no name. Yet both knew they only stood upon the threshold. Lulu found herself yearning to explore all the hills and valleys of Auron's silences, the trials of his years in the monastery and the particular paths that had led him there, his steps towards death with Braska, and the fog-shrouded enigma of his last ten years. Auron let her know with his oblique questions that he had been listening tightly to the few clues she let slip, and he had more than professional curiosity about her last two pilgrimages, her years with his best friend's daughter, the way she had come into her power, how she had learned loss so young and dared to love anyway. They could have explored more deeply but forbore, fearing that they might not find their way out again if they dared set foot in the virgin canyons of each other's souls.


	35. Marked

Lulu had always felt a certain nostalgia for Auron's scars. It wasn't only her admiration for him as a consummate warrior. He was so secretive, so transient: they were a mark of memory, a lasting record of where he had been and who he was, the story he did not tell. More, they were a visible symbol of his frailty, fallibility, humanity. The legendary hero was neither invulnerable nor immune to life's buffets.

She loved the naked humility of his drooping eyelid, half-hidden by his glasses: an intimate moment of horror and pain stamped on his face for anyone to see. Auron communicated mostly in deeds, not words. She kissed it often.

Now, however, the mage had seen the hand that dealt him those scars, and she wanted to deny them as fiercely as she loved them. _Yunalesca_ had put that line down his weathered face and claimed his eye, his very life. Would that Lulu could burn away every last trace of her! But that would be to become her, molding his surfaces like a traveler etching self-glorifying initials into an ancient oak on whom she had no claim.

And yet Lulu knew herself a hypocrite as her nails scored his shoulders. She bit. She clawed his back. She bared her throat, willing Auron to lose control enough to leave a permanent white rind of tooth-marks marring her pearly skin. She worked her most intoxicating magic on his flesh, her whole being bent on the sensual task of making the taciturn guardian cry out with more passion than he had during his fatal lunge at Yunalesca.

As much as Lulu wished he were free, deep down, she yearned for some outward sign that she had left a mark on his soul.


	36. Heart's Language

Weary and sated, Lulu nestled her cheek against the warrior's chest, a fierce smile flickering across her features.

Auron sighed. "Lulu."

"Mm?"

Without a word, he braced his arm behind her shoulders and turned onto his side, clanking against the bulkhead. Sometimes she wished they would give in, admit their secret, and ask Cid for a cabin with a wider bunk. But that would mean having to define the nature of this strange conjunction of Venus and Mars.

"Auron?" Her fingers drifted across his cheek. "What's wrong?"

"You were listening again." His rumble was half amused, half irritated. "Do you think it will stop when I'm not paying attention?"

"It's a magic I can't grasp." She paused. "That troubles you?"

Once she would have respected his rasp of breath and stony silence, but she was becoming painfully aware of time running out. She tipped up her chin and fixed him with a steely glance made sterner by the flicker of the lamp's flame.

Auron gave a sour chuckle. "You've loved the dead too long, Lulu. If I were... an ordinary man... would you still have me?"

Lulu drew a sharp breath. "No!" she snapped irritably.

He snorted. "I suspected as much."

"But you were never ordinary, Sir Auron," she admonished. "I remember the stories."

"You know better than to believe everything you hear." That dry smirk had probably been one of the reasons for his troubles as a monk. "Naive. Earnest. A fighter. Devoted to Yevon. Sound like anyone else in our party? You would have had no more patience with me."

"Oh, Auron." With a sigh, she drew her fingertips down the side of his neck and lower, brushing the hollow of his breastbone. "Perhaps. I can't deny that I find the power that keeps you with us... fascinating." Her eyes flicked upwards. "But when I listen to your heart, I hear your story, one the temples do not tell. Loyalty. Courage. Defiance. Desperation. One who refused to yield. One who loved the dead enough to deny his own rest, until he could fulfill oaths to them." She brushed her lips against his jaw. "That is who you always were, and not Yevon nor Yunalesca nor death itself can touch it."

The stories also did not tell that a man who should not even be breathing could kiss fiercely enough to steal one's breath away, Lulu noted smugly.


	37. Descent

When the ice had broken beneath their feet, and Sin's heaving maw lurched under them, alive with crawling scales, Lulu had not blanched. When she had awakened in the middle of alien, blinding heat facedown in the sand, she had merely shrugged, staggered to her feet, and started walking. But now, clinging to the rivets of an Al Bhed machina that had seemed too massive to fly and was now hurtling downwards as if it had forgotten how -- oh, yes, she was frightened. Terrified, in fact.

The buckles of Lulu's dress were clanking against the hull, and in a moment she would lose her grip. What good were Yuna's Guardians if Rikku's mad father lost them en route to Bevelle?

She tried to call for help, but fear or speed ripped the words from her throat.

Auron was shouting something behind her. _Let go_? Surely she had misheard. But the careening descent left her no choice. Her hands suddenly lost purchase as the nose of the ship tipped downward, and she felt herself falling up and away from the skin of the ship.

Too fast to pray or scream, she felt a buffeting blow in the small of her back. An instant later she found herself mashed against the ship's skin once again.

"Grab hold," Auron shouted in her ear.

Rigid with terror, the mage found she could not stir a muscle. She realized that the arm around her waist belonged to the stoic swordsman, who was now clinging to the airship one-handed, his gauntlet jammed into a seam between two deck-plates that had been damaged by their battle with Evrae.

Flying. Dear Yevon, she had faced every peril on this journey without a hair-stick slipping out of place, but they were _flying_ on a beast of metal and blasphemy that had no business being airbourne, and apparently meant to atone for its trespass as swiftly as possible. The machina was quaking hard enough to mask her trembling. In other circumstances, she might have enjoyed the taciturn Guardian's embrace (or, more likely, threatened to freeze his arm off at the socket), but right now she was in no condition to savor the improbable moment.

"Grab hold," Auron barked, "or I'll drop you."

"_What_?" The mage turned her head, aghast. The legendary Guardian was staring straight ahead towards their destination, paying her no more attention than the jug strapped to his belt.

"You have ten seconds," he said harshly.

Horror, disbelief, and spitting anger churned in her stomach for a few perilous seconds, but suddenly Lulu found she could move. Twisting, she managed to get one arm under him and the other hand clamped onto his belt. It was none too soon. He released her and grabbed for another handhold, clinging grimly.

"Thanks," the mage hissed through gritted teeth. "Remind me to kill you after we've rescued Yuna."

She wasn't sure whether Auron had heard her, but for some reason he seemed to be smiling.


	38. Spiralbound

_Crack_. The scroll's spine snapped like a chicken bone. Lulu examined the tear and splintered wood abstractly, then looked up to see whether anyone had noticed.

No, of course not. Only Wakka might realize her respect for books and the wrongness of a sacred scroll with its back broken, ragged golden paper showing bone-white along the tear between her chipped fingernails.

Rikku glanced over and grinned, shaking her head. "Yevon, hunh?" she asked, taking any smugness out of the question with an understanding smile. "No answers there. But don't worry. We'll save Yunie. We told Yunalesca off. I _know_ Yunie's going to be okay now."

"I think so." Lulu gazed across the fire past Yuna and Tidus with their heads together talking in low, shy voices, to the silhouette in red standing watch at the edge of the circle.

Edge of the spiral. They were trying to change the world. If only it were possible to change it just a little more

But no. She slipped the shattered wooden stem free of its petals of thin yellow paper, and tapped it against her lips like the end of a stylus. Watching him. Memorizing how he stood there, what he stood for. How would she put _that_ into words?

Legendary hero, the history books would say.

With a sigh, the mage reached for another scroll. A pity one could only write the past, not the future.


	39. Rationing

They had learned to ration themselves into these cracks between the days. There was so little time. Most of it was spent plotting, fighting, guarding, gathering in weapons and strength for a battle that was right off the map, that no Trials or Teachings could prepare them for. Jecht was waiting. They would never know if they were ready until they tried. Yuna needed Lulu -- not for advice or protection anymore, she went her own way; she just needed the mage's silent presence, like the torch flickering in the Chamber of Fayth to serve as witness to the Summoner's vigil. Tidus needed Auron to be there in case anything went wrong.

They belonged to their Summoner and their companions.

So they rationed these moments. It wasn't merely the passionate joinings, with clouds drifting past the airship's window and an endless abyss below them. It wasn't when Lulu allowed herself to be a sensuous young woman in her own body, or the times that Auron let himself laugh for some reason other than sheer cynicism or the riptides of fate. It was when they stopped guarding -- not just others, but themselves from themselves.

Auron was tired and let it show, sitting on the floor with his arms stretched out behind him on the bunk, sprawling like the spreading roots of an old tree.

Lulu was tired of too many companions and admitted it. She loved them all, even that irritating boy from the sea and Yuna's bright cousin, but she had never travelled with more than two before, and she longed for the secret shadows of Besaid's jungles where she might lose herself for days when the village closed around her.

They rationed themselves to truths. To confidences: not too many, of course; each prized secrecy, and weeks could not cut through years of walls. To memories: Auron's first lesson in the monastery, the last thing Lulu's mother told her before she was gone. To dry jokes and wry observations about their companions and the unorthodox road they had travelled.

Most of all, they rationed silence. There was a weight and heft to it, when shared, that transcended the reach of any sword or spell. When Auron was gone, Lulu would remember their shared silences most of all: his silhouette against the porthole, her hand on his shoulder, and the quiet moments when no one needed them to be anything, or to explain.


	40. Cold Shoulder

"It's been...long enough."

Long enough. Too long, maybe. It's easy enough to step past the bewildered blitz captain and raise a fist to thump the Ronso warrior's chest, silent thanks for an old promise kept so well. Easy to meet the gaze of a reluctant young Summoner who knows what must be done. Tidus isn't arguing either; he understands and will have to face his own fate soon. The Al Bhed girl seems shaken, but to her I was more of an obstacle than a friend.

The mage half-turns, the icy reserve I saw behind her eyes when we first met settling back into place like a woman smoothing out her skirts in the morning. Lulu knew what she was doing when she reached for a dying fire. I'll make no apologies. She makes no reproach.

Should I be afraid? Should I regret? Steps away from them, from her, help me savor my limbs' freedom as pyreflies begin to peel me away piecemeal, memory by memory. That was my first sword. This was Braska's unexpected laughter. There was my first glimpse of a drunken sod in a cell who turned out to be the best man in two worlds. That was the taste of her lips wet with tears. A few steps more. _This is your world now_ is meant for Lulu as much as for all of them, but I can't even tell if she's heard me.

One white shoulder and the line of her back turned towards me gleam like the crescent moon in my fading sight. My spirit leaps free untethered, leaving every ache behind.

Cold silence was her forté. Others saw it as unkindness. There is no better gift, when letting go.


	41. Broken Mirror

"Hey, Lu!"

The mage looked up from her sewing with a distant frown. Yes, sewing. Her unusual tastes in clothing confounded the Besaid weavers entirely, and she had to do her own repairs. It had been a long pilgrimage, and the embroidery on her sleeves had unravelled like Yevon, like all her fears and expectations. The quiet joy of Yuna's survival was a cause for flowers. But for other reasons, she was feeling threadbare.

Menial tasks helped.

"Let's go back to Guadosalam, eh? Let's tell Chappu what happened!"

She drew a sharp breath. She had told herself she would be prepared to see one more familiar face take its place among the beloved dead. Auron had so earned it. But was she ready? And what would Wakka think, if it was not Chappu nor Ginnem that appeared before her?

"The Guado," she said quietly, "may not be ready for visitors. Especially the slayers of Lord Seymour."

"Oh, right." Wakka rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, dey were so sad, last time we stopped by. Trommel thought we meant to kill 'im. An' dey were all 'we're just waiting for Sin to kill us,' ya know. Dey'd given up. Maybe dey need some good news. Healing Spira, putting our old quarrels behind us, like Yuna said."

"I have had _enough_ journeying for a while!" Lulu snapped sharply.

Wakka blinked, visibly backpedalling without actually taking a step. "You're kiddin', right? I thought you said after pilgrimage, if we actually survived dis thing, you wanted to travel and pick Master Maechen's memories--"

"That was before." Lulu gazed down wearily at the embroidery. "Wakka--"

"Hey, you two." A slip of a figure was blinking in the early light filtering between the pillars before the temple.

"Heee-ey... sleepyhead!" The blitzer turned and went bounding towards her. "Yuna! I got a great idea! Let's go to--"

"_Wakka_," the mage said sharply. "No. Just _no_."

He halted, head and shoulders drooping. "Hey, it was just an idea."

Yuna looked up at him with a hollow-eyed smile. "What was?" she asked in a low, flat voice.

The kindhearted athlete gazed down at her gaunt expression, and his own softened at once. "Nevermind. Lu's right. Let's just go to the beach today, ya?"

"Okay." Yuna dropped her eyes and glided across the village square to seat herself quietly next to the mage. A handful of well-wishers and admirers seem to swarm from the huts almost at once, converging on the pair. Lulu folded her work and rose quietly to stand beside the newest High Summoner, arms folded. If Yuna grew too fatigued, a few sharp words or steely gazes would clear a space for her.

Yuna glanced up with a private, grateful wink, composed herself demurely, and began to face the day's petitioners.

Wakka watched them with a sigh and a head-shake. "I'll see you sometime, Chappu, okay?" he said wistfully, and picked up his ball to head for the beach.


	42. What Am I Saying?

_Theme: "Slip(ping)"  
_

* * *

. 

Something had slipped. Lulu knew it, wondered how the others could have missed it, but Lord Jyscal's macabre visitation had tyrannized everyone else's attention. They had not noticed the imperturbable Guardian's collapse or his strained voice urging them away, away from that damned portal.

Was it her imagination, or had a few wisps of pyreflies trailed after them? Tidus was yapping questions again. Certainly Lord Jyscal's appearance demanded answers. Except that Lulu had the feeling they were slipping away from their whole purpose here, not only because of Seymour's proposition. The party debated the matter with excited horror, until Auron's gruff pronouncement, as usual, backed up her surmises with grim authority.

"He died an unclean death."

Ginnem's blood strewn from wall to wall came back to Lulu in a flash. She cast a sidelong glance at him, for his voice still sounded ragged. His eye was squeezed shut -- no, no, that was the one he could not open, and not for the first time she wondered how he had come by that scar. But his whole face was clenched and ashen, just as it had been when Yuna had banished Jyscal back to his proper plane. The mage was not given to gestures of familiarity, least of all towards the senior Guardian in the party, yet she felt an odd urge to touch the bare hand he kept propped outside the fold of his coat. In sympathy? Or to assure herself that Jyscal's was the only form that had slipped after them when they exited that mysterious membrane?

Enough, enough, the Farplane had unsettled her. Thoughts were swimming around her skull like pyreflies in a sphere. When Yuna insisted on entering the mansion alone to give Seymour her reply, Lulu found herself pacing away so that she would not encroach on the comfortable boundaries that she and Auron had established between one another, a barrier of aloof mutual respect. She found an arched walkway leading up to a mezzanine where she could keep watch over the front doors of the Maester's house. Tidus trailed after her, pestering her about Yuna's marriage, obliquely unburdening his young heart.

Glib answers came so easily. _All you need is determination. As long as you have that, you don't need love._ Lulu guessed she was saying it just to irk him, perhaps since her more customary target, Wakka, was out of range. Meanwhile she found herself gazing out across the weirdly-illuminated tendrils and branches of the living city, down to the red-cloaked figure standing beside the gate. She exhaled. Tidus was obviously not going to give her the peace to set her thoughts in order, and she was feeling kindly enough towards him now to deal with him patiently instead of driving him off with a verbal thunderbolt. At last, she gave up and retraced her steps back to the mansion's front yard. Tidus tagged after her. What was taking Yuna so long?

As the young blitzer continued to interrogate her, Lulu found herself circling back on her answers in contradiction, trying to deflect the naive boy from Yuna's affections while secretly yearning to cement the two of them together. They could be happy, then, if only Yuna would ever willingly be happy for her own sake instead of Spira's. Lulu knew her too well to hope for that, however. She didn't want to talk about this anymore. (Why was she still talking?) She almost laughed when Tidus turned the whole ridiculous conversation on its head and made a clumsy pass at her.

Now that, at least, was something she knew how to deal with. "I could add you to my list. Good luck, little boy. You'll need it." The scuff of Wakka's sandals on the flagstones as he turned towards them agape nearly brought a smirk to her lips.

With another musical laugh and head-shake, Lulu abandoned Tidus and glided over to Sir Auron, bestowing him that beseeching look that occasionally elicited an amused snort. "Assessment?" she asked, glancing towards the doors of the Guado residence.

"Trouble."

She found herself gratified that Auron had bothered to answer her rhetorical question. In the satisfaction she felt at the one gruff word, an inner leap which never reached her cool, poised features, she had her answer.

"Trouble," she agreed, mimicking his snort. Lulu cast an appraising gaze over the swordsman's trim, solid figure, and felt the same gnat's sting of gratification as a moment before. Trouble indeed. Apparently Tidus and Wakka were not the only idiots in the party.


	43. Freefall

_Theme: "Dreamy" (as always, these are drabbles I composed for a fanfic community with a list of specific writer's prompts)  
_

* * *

. 

Hopes, dreams, regrets: Lulu and Auron had little patience with any of the three. Let Tidus and Yuna float on gossamer memories of a watery liaison drenched in Macalania moonlight. The older Guardians' feet were rooted firmly on solid earth, and their eyes on the road ahead. If they had taken time along the way for a few moments of private passion, well, that had been raw skin, heaving bodies and sweat, not the stuff of daydream and scented flowers.

No, but...

Somewhere inside Sin's tormented nightmares, where a darkened sky gusted ribbons of ghost-light, where crystal trees fenced a tenuous boundary around an icy lake, where spikes of deadly cold flitted from spot to spot impaling their footprints with up-thrust pinnacles of ice, where eerie hanging jewels drifted in and out of existence taunting and beckoning: in a world gone mad they danced between death and dream. Lulu felt giddy, although his presence was more sensed than seen as they battled to survive and keep their friends alive.

There was no time for thought or strategy now. All their effort was bent on movement, staying two steps ahead of the lunging stalactites that threatened to spear them every moment. Yuna's Guardians wove and spun, spiralling across the glassy surface like frantic pyreflies.

Tidus cursed as a flickering jewel melted before his outstretched hands. His friends converged on him as a spike of ice inexplicably exploded into a strange armored behemoth with a clashing shell.

Were the dreams of the Fayth like this? Auron's black blade sheared through the alien creature's carapace, Kimahri's spear drove in through the breach, and Tidus executed one of those complicated spinning leaps to take it down. Lulu twisted away from another ice-spear that had erupted at her feet. Her shoes skidded on the slick surface, but a strong arm caught her by the waist and steadied her.

"Concentrate," Auron growled.

His scowl eased a fraction at the mage's improbably radiant smile. She twirled around him, and for a moment they were dancing together, circling towards a shimmering glow that was gathering itself in mid-air a few paces away.

The air here fairly quivered with magic. It was twisted, wrong, horrible, and yet there was an eerie beauty to the un-world of Sin's delirium that reminded Lulu of the power caged in a shadow gem. "I wish we could stay," she breathed. A sharp ringing clang drove them apart as yet another ghostly spine shot up between them.

"Odd tastes you have," he observed wryly.

Delicate golden and rosy light resolved itself into a large jewel hovering nearby. They lunged in unison, hands clasping it the last instant before it dissolved. Their fingers passed through it and met palm to palm. For a moment they stood frozen there like two figures hovering on the edge of the Farplane, mirrored in each other's eye. Lulu noticed her own hands had become as transparent as glass. She met his concerned gaze serenely. Maybe this was as far as their journey could go, after all. Neither the living nor the dead belonged here. Only dream eternal...

Then the ghostly dark world unravelled around them in black ribbons, and suddenly, inexplicably, they stood on a solid metal platform, surrounded by the lights and spires of ancient Zanarkand.

They were out of time. All that remained was battle and a long-postponed Sending. Auron's smoldering eyes locked onto a dark figure at the far end of the pier, silhouetted against a burning glyph that Lulu had seen somewhere before. Forgotten, she stepped away and folded her arms, bracing herself for what must be.

The dream had run its course. This was his story now.


	44. Piecemeal

_Theme: "Slow and Steady"  
_

* * *

. 

"That's it." The mage folded her fingers with delicate precision around Rikku's wrist, adjusting her hand's position minutely. "Turn from the wrist, not from the elbow. Now breathe out."

The girl was trembling but determined. Lulu had suggested starting with water, since it held less terror for her than other elements, and had the added attraction of being something an Al Bhed looked upon as a blessing.

The sputtering spell's yield was no more than a bucketful, but Wakka's yelp at the rude awakening was something both women would later laugh about. Not that it was funny at the time. Lulu's withering, "_Really_, Wakka, one would think you'd never been in a blitz sphere," finally sent him away muttering.

* * *

. 

"Stop." Auron's gloved hand clamped onto Tidus' shoulder, shoving him roughly so that the boy staggered. "You're pressing again. Balance matters far more than speed."

"You'd know all about that, old man," Tidus quipped.

* * *

. 

The embers of the fire had burned low in the late watches before dawn, but Lulu remained with her back to the fire, arms folded against the chill. "They'll be ready," she confided in a low voice. As so often, the mage and swordsman had exchanged curt notes about their charges during the watch they shared. "One step at a time."

"And you?"

She arched an eyebrow. "After two pilgrimages, I had better be."

He grunted. "I don't mean firepower, Lulu."

There was a telltale pauseÑ whatever had happened in the Calm Lands before, it was clearly still gnawing at her. "I know where we're going, Sir Auron," she said finally, "and what will happen. I did not start a journey I would not be able to finish."

_No, you don't,_ he wanted to say. _Yevon's bark is flaking away from you piece by piece, but you still cling to the last few scraps, even knowing the Maesters are corrupt. You don't yet know the root is rotten._

Auron's resolve wavered for a moment. Did he still doubt her? She had absorbed Maester Seymour's betrayal and the discovery of Bevelle's corruption with dispassionate pragmatism.

_Not yet_. Tempting as it was to enlist her wisdom against the trap that lay ahead, he could not risk the chance that she might turn aside, might even be able to shake Yuna's convictions with the full truth. _She has to find this out for herself, one step at a time._

Auron caught Lulu watching him instead of scanning the shadows. Confound the woman. She was more shrewd and more unpredictable than he had guessed. He had feared that these slaves of Yevon would insist on a Sending, if they knew what he truly was. But prizing out his little secret had simply drawn her to him like pyreflies to a moon-lily. Better not to let anything else slip.

With a grunt, he turned and hoisted his sword, tromping off on another prowling circuit of their camp.

Lulu sighed and turned back to face the enveloping darkness. Piece by piece, she was beginning to chip away at that mask of his. He still kept a few spheres hidden in his sleeves. Didn't he trust her yet, after all that had happened? But perhaps she had been rash to bridge the gap between them with passion's fleeting touch. Her lips curled at a memory. Oh, yes, they had been rash.

It didn't matter. Sooner or later, she would chisel through his brittle silences and veiled hints. She had a feeling Sir Auron expected no less of her.

The dream had run its course. This was his story now.


	45. Scouting Report

_Theme: "Exposed"_

* * *

. 

"Why d'you wear this thing, anyway?" Rikku turned the fur edging the mage's bodice back up to make sure the stitches she was making didn't show, then rolled it down again to continue working on the tear. It was tricky doing spot repair on clothes that somebody was still wearing, but the Calm Lands didn't exactly have dressing rooms. "One wrong move in battle, and -- 'pop'! I guess maybe you've got some spell to prevent that, eh? Don't you ever get sunburned?"

The sorceress smiled faintly at Yuna's shy chuckle; Lulu suspected that some of Rikku's neverending prattle was meant to cheer her cousin. "Besaid temple makes a salve to protect the skin." Lulu jerked as the needle pricked her. She'd have to remember to reapply the salve over the area that Yuna's healing spells had just mended.

"Oops, sorry Lulu." Was that on purpose? The clever thief's nimble fingers seldom slipped. "It's just not _fair._ Wakka and Tidus won't even look at me. I mean, not that I want some blockheaded Yevonite getting any ideas, but--"

A soft tread swishing through the high grass made them start. Lulu glanced up, readying her tongue for a sharp dismissal, but it was not Tidus or Wakka trying to steal a glimpse, only Sir Auron. Rikku froze. Yuna reddened on the spot, as if supplying Lulu's embarrassment for her. The mage merely lifted an eyebrow.

The gray-haired guardian, however, didn't seem to be looking at her face. His collar and glasses made it hard to be certain, but he seemed to be staring right at her ample attributes bared to the bright sun. Her heartbeat quickened. Was the no-nonsense, curmudgeonly Sir Auron actually dazzled by their white expanse?

"Kimahri's spotted a Guado scout patrolling the rim of the gorge. The bridge may be guarded."

Yuna's face fell. "Okay."

Lulu nodded curtly, stifling a childish stab of disappointment. Apparently not.

The swordsman turned on his heel and headed back towards the male members of the party, gathered a discreet distance away where Yuna's skirts blocked their view.

Wakka and Tidus looked up from their whispering. The blitz captain eyed Sir Auron with a caustic glare, perhaps miffed that he had gotten away with something not permitted to one who had known her longer. Shaking his head, Wakka turned back to the younger athlete and resumed their muffled debate.

"They're not padded," Auron said, staring off over the grasslands. Not that he hadn't known it already, but it never hurt to confirm observations by daylight.

Tidus gaped. "Oh."

Wakka elbowed him, looking even more disgruntled. "Told ya."


	46. Fragments

_Theme/Prompt: "Sphere(s)"_

* * *

. 

Ten unhatched eggs pulsed secrets in the corner, gathered in a bowl. Their blue glimmer bathed the cabin ceiling and kept Lulu awake.

_They're all I have left of him._

Not exactly: Tidus had never recorded anything of himself. No, these were his father's memories, left in hopes of a future cut short by the past.

_Break them._

If they had only held fragments of Jecht, that would have been easier. But Braska was there too. And Auron.

_  
I can't just put him behind me, Lulu! I'm not as strong as you are._

Jecht, whose roguish smugness reminded her that Wakka wasn't so bad. Braska, so calm and wise and wrong. Auron's lost self, that young warrior with the well-knit frame whose scars still lay ahead: naive, brash, outspoken... impassioned... beautiful.

_Yuna. You'll watch them over and over like those who keep visiting the Farplane until their hearts drain dry. Don't. Live._

She had allowed herself to view them once. That was all. Tomorrow they would be locked tight in a chest in Besaid.

_You keep them for me, then. I don't want them destroyed. He might come back someday._

Lulu exhaled and closed her eyes against the pyrefly gleams. At least she was not tormented by hope. Yes, she would guard them for Yuna, even if the cost, as always, was more than a Summoner could or should know.


	47. Never Forget

_A/N: Slightly censored for this site; original posted elsewhere. Drabble writing prompt: "Never."  
_

* * *

_Never say that gods are immortal.  
Never imagine that truths are kind.  
Never give fealty or faith without question.  
Never yield to despair or indifference.  
Never admit you can't go on.  
Never declare what you're willing to die for, or the world just might oblige._

These are the lessons I learned from you, Sir Auron.  
These are the words you never had to say.

"What?" He brushed her bangs aside, looking down his chest at the pale face pillowed over his heart.

"Hm?" Lulu arched an eyebrow.

"Don't play coy," he said. "You're _thinking_ again."

"Oh, right." She rolled onto her side— Auron reached out to grab her shoulder; the airship bunks were none too wide— and stretched with an alluring wriggle. "You're here for what's out here, not what's between my ears."

"Hmph." His hand slid down her side. "And you lured me to your room to discuss strategy, I suppose."

She chuckled."Touché."

"So. What's so important that it's distracting you from... strategizing?" His fingers kept wandering, gliding over her hip in descending circles.

"A great deal." She snuggled closer. "Your fault, of course. You've given me much to think about..." She sighed, letting him fill in lacunas. "The gist: legends are those who out-stubborn the universe."

"Only jackasses can change the world."

"Ha." She elbowed his ribs. "Don't talk like Tidus."

"Al Bhed, actually. One aided me when we got separated."

"The world rewards stubbornness." Her fingers curled into a fist, knuckles pressed against the scar on his chest left by the same stroke that had claimed his eye. "Sometimes."

"Lulu." The soft growl was a command and a warning.

She was happy to oblige. Reverently, wickedly, lovingly — there were never words powerful to describe how two fierce souls met in body's symphony — she climbed his ladder of sinew and muscle, wrapping her arms around him and letting kisses flesh sear away every thought. But as Auron's tongue drove into her mouth, one last defiant thought rose above passion's tide:

_I will never forget and never regret, though I will never find a living man to match you._

* * *


End file.
